Burt's Bees manufactures in North Carolina. Under Canada's new counter-tariffs,
By liranhirschkorn · September 10, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Burt's Bees manufactures in North Carolina. Under Canada's new counter-tariffs, half of that catalog now crosses the border differently than the other half.
Canada's countermeasures took effect Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. Surtaxes of 15, 25 and 50 percent on roughly $27.6 billion of US goods, each rate matched to the corresponding US rate.
Most of the coverage has reported this as "beauty products, 50 percent." The schedule is narrower than that.
On the list at 50 percent: perfumes, lip make-up, eye make-up, manicure and pedicure preparations, and hair preparations classified as "other," which is where conditioners, treatments, oils and styling products land.
Not on the list: skin care and sunscreen, powders, shampoo, oral care, deodorant and shaving preparations, soap.
So a tinted lip balm and a conditioner fall on lines carrying a 50 percent surtax. A face cream, a shampoo and a bar of soap fall on lines that were never listed. Same brand, same country of origin, same border.
One reason the reporting drifted: Canada's schedule repeats the chapter heading on every row, and that heading reads "including sunscreen or sun tan preparations." The items actually listed underneath it are lip, eye and nails.
The origin test catches people too. CUSMA eligibility does not exempt a good. What matters is whether it marks as US origin under the CUSMA marking rules, a looser test than the preferential rules most brands know. Product merely routed through a US warehouse from a third country isn't caught at all.
Then there is the part the ad console will never tell you.
Amazon has never known your landed cost. If you sell into Amazon Canada and part of your catalog sits on that list, your break-even ACoS moved on Tuesday for those SKUs and stayed exactly where it was for everything else. Those campaigns still report the same ACoS they reported last week. Some of them are now buying sales you would rather not have, and nothing in the interface flags it.
Two things worth knowing while you sort it out:
1. Goods in transit on September 8 are exempt, so shipment dates matter right now. And Canada is extending its surtax remission framework to these measures, with both self-assessment and formal application routes..
2. Whether a specific unit gets caught still comes down to where that SKU was made and how it marks, which is a broker question rather than a category question.
Sort your Canadian catalog by tariff line before you touch a single price or bid.